Kex by Judy Colella (children's books read aloud .txt) 📕

Because if the former Erik the Round had it in for him, he was toast.

*******

“What in the world are you laughing at?” asked Rianna, a pretty freshman who sat next to Kex in Social Sciences.

He shot her a quick glance, hoping his open display of amusement wouldn’t make people think he’d lost his mind. “Tell you later,” he hissed, nodding toward the teacher who thus far hadn’t noticed anything.

She shrugged and began twiddling with her pen. At least she’d gotten a “later” from him. Most of the time, he acted like he had no time for girls, and at first, she’d wondered about his sexual preferences. But she’d cornered him outside the gym one afternoon, and despite feeling overwhelmed by his size, she’d leaned up and kissed him on the mouth just to see what he’d do.

What he did was kiss her back. In fact, she felt like she was melting and didn’t want him to stop. What she didn’t realize was that if they hadn’t been in such a public place, he probably wouldn’t have. After that, he’d asked her out for coffee, and they’d gone to the movies a couple of times. But there was this odd sense of reserve, almost a shyness that everything else about him contradicted. Girls from every grade were attracted to him, despite some of them being two or three years older, making Rianna wonder how many of them he was actually seeing. Besides her, of course.

Kex wrestled with his sense of humor for a few minutes before finally getting it fully under control. After the unexpected meeting with his former enemy, he had wondered how long – if ever – it would take Taylor to figure things out. If he did, though, it would be fun to see how the realization would affect him. It was the idea of the quarterback trying to beat him up again that had caused the silent laughter – that idiot was so far out of his league at this point, it was –

“Kex? Are you paying attention?”

Uh-oh. “Um, no, sir. Sorry. Did you ask me something?” He gave the teacher a weak smile.

“See? Now that kind of honesty I can appreciate. I’m not happy about him daydreaming in class, but at least he didn’t try and lie about it.”

“What did I miss?”

“Well, my affable giant, I was trying to get one of you to tell me why heirarchies exist in societies where class is a non-issue.”

Kex nodded. He had no idea. “Oh.”

The teacher sighed. “Go back to sleep. Read Chapter Seven at some point and give me an answer in the next class.”

“Yes, sir.” Now the smile Kex gave him was a grateful one. As fascinating as Social Science was, he had other things to think about at the moment, but it occurred to him that he might be able to use some of what the man was talking about in his next installment of Viking Lord.

During his first week at the University, he’d picked up a copy of the school newspaper and noticed a few comic strips. None of them impressed him one way or the other, but they gave him the inspiration to go speak with the editor about his own work. He’d been creating Viking Lord comics since his sophomore year of high school, and by now it was a fully-developed story, the illustrations complex and numerous. Why not try and publish it in this forum first, see what kind of response it got? Unlike high school, the University was populated by people of diverse enough backgrounds that a good percentage of them would most likely enjoy his work rather than ridicule it.

He had brought a few episodes to the copy editor, and had been promptly accepted as their new contributor to the entertainment section. Within days he was hearing students and faculty alike talking about the new comics in the paper, praising the artwork and discussing the storyline with enthusiasm. He was shocked. Pleased, but shocked. It was actually through this medium that his new name came about.

He didn’t like the clumsy way “Erik Exford” looked and sounded, and tried to come up with something more…appropriate. He said his name out loud several times and wrote it several more next to the title of the first story. First he wrote it the regular way, then in all caps, and finally, without spaces. The progression went from Erik Exford to ERIK EXFORD and finally ERIKEXFORD. From there, he’d played with the letters, and considered “Ford,” “Erex,” “Erx,” “Exfo,” “Exfor,” and “Kord.” None of them worked for him. And then, for no other reason than that he hadn’t tried it yet, he wrote, “KEX.” He liked it. He put it on the comic strip and submitted it. And within that aforementioned number of days, people were wondering out loud who this Kex guy was.

By now no one was calling him anything else, and for the most part, didn’t know or remember that he’d ever even had another name. He also began embedding it in his programs, happy with its ease of use in that context. He was endlessly amazed as well at how much his schoolmates liked odd names like his. He even discovered that many students had nicknames invented by others, and which everyone enjoyed saying. He supposed they thought it sounded cool or something.

An obnoxious noise he recognized as the period bell intruded on his thoughts and he got up.

“Were you listening at all?” asked Rianna, walking out with him.

“Nope. Probably not a good thing.”

“So what were you laughing at earlier?”

He shook his head, trying not to look at her too often. She was, in his humble opinion, the most beautiful girl he’d ever met, and he was fighting the urge to fall hopelessly in love with her. He never could decide if it was that first kiss, or the fact that she’d started it that won him over. “A little bit of my past showed up today,” he said. “Some guy who used to beat the crap out of me all the time.”

“You’re kidding! Who could possibly do that?”

He grinned. “I wasn’t always this size, you know.”

“Geez, I hope not. Your poor mother!”

It took him a second…he got it and laughed, his already pleasant features transforming into something irresistible. “She tells me I was pretty freakin’ big for a baby, but yeah – not like this.” He looked down at himself. He’d finally gotten used to the vast distance between his eyes and his feet.

“Okay, but – what did you look like?”

The smile faded. “Gross. I was horribly overweight, short, and had huge hands and feet – I looked like something out of a B movie.”

She sensed he wasn’t comfortable talking about that part of his life, at the same time realizing that this was probably the source of that bizarre shyness she’d detected. “Well, you sure aren’t gross now.”

“I had to work very hard at it, though. Went on a strict diet and joined the gym, took up kick-boxing and stopped vegging out in front of the computer so much.”

“Yet you’re majoring in it.”

He nodded. “I figured out a way to use my laptop while standing up. Once I had that going, I’d do all my work while pacing around the basement.” He uttered a quiet snort. “What a dweeb.”

“Hey, Kex!” a chorus of female voices said as he passed a group of cheerleaders holding some kind of meeting on the lawn to his left.

He offered them a wave and a smile. “Anyhow, I met the guy today, and he had no idea who I was.”

“Is that what you were laughing about?”

“No. More at what he might do if he ever finds out. And don’t ask me to explain that.”

She grinned. “Okay, chief.”

They had reached the part of the path where they would go off in opposite directions. He turned to look at her finally, planning to say a non-committal good-bye, but was met with a fierce kiss. He almost groaned as his body instantly reacted. He wasn’t a virgin any more, having tossed that away during his junior year of high school, but that wasn’t making things any better. Worse, in fact. God, how he wanted to…

She pulled back, practically panting. “Can I see you later?”

He swallowed, unable to speak, and nodded. He automatically lowered his books to cover his extremely obvious reaction to her attentions and tried – unsuccessfully – not to stare at her nipples, which were doing an imitation of – 

“I’ll meet you at the Union about eight?”

Another nod.

“Good.” She turned and hurried away down the path.

He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see the provocative sway of her backside. He had to stop this. He had to get to class. He had to have sex.

“Kex?”

He nearly shrieked. “What?” This was turning out to be one hell of a day.

“Are you coming to the meeting tomorrow?”

Meeting. He had a meeting? What meeting? Oh! That meeting! Yeah! The one with a roomful of computer programmers like himself, and no sex. Right! “Er, yeah.”

“Okay. Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten.” The club’s President, Jeremy, gave him a quick smile and a salute, and wandered away.

I need to sit down, he told himself, determined to push away all thoughts of what Rianna might have in mind for that night. They’d been out together a few times, it was true, but had never done anything more than kiss and touch. He wasn’t sure if she wanted any more than that, but was beginning to think she did, and now he really had to go sit down.

Rules were rules, and they’d been broken. Well, one of them, anyway. The one that said No Boys in the Girl’s Dorm After Ten O’Clock. Rules like that didn’t exist in the Sorority Houses, but Rianna didn’t live in one of those. As a freshman, she had to wait until she’d proven herself to be a good Little Sister, and her final acceptance into Beta Sigma House wouldn’t happen until right before Winter Break.

So she’d broken the rules, and there was no denying it. Not that she really cared one way or the other. Especially not on this particular morning as she lay curled against the rippling muscles of her Viking. He’d told her only his mother came from that part of the world, but his physique declared loudly whose genes were dominant.

The sun had been up for at least twenty minutes, but she was in no hurry to join it. Instead, she stared at the young man who had literally rocked her world the night before, this massive yet incredibly gentle young man whose size, it turned out, was consistent everywhere. She grinned, shivering, and draped an arm over his broad chest. He’d taken his time, making sure he wasn’t hurting her, and in the end had given her more pleasure than she’d ever dreamed possible. How easy it would be to fall in love with him! she thought, kissing one of his ribs, not yet ready to admit that maybe she already had.

Kex made the deep, rumbling sound of someone having a lovely dream, and slowly opened his eyes.

“Morning,” she whispered.

“Am I still